


Once Upon a Time in Uberwald

by Heronfem



Series: Works for Others [1]
Category: Discworld - Terry Pratchett
Genre: F/M, Fluff, Slice of Life, i learned how to do html coding for footnotes for this
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-27
Updated: 2018-05-27
Packaged: 2019-05-14 06:33:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,985
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14764457
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Heronfem/pseuds/Heronfem
Summary: Glenda and Nutt go to visit Lady Margolotta, and Glenda comes to a small but important realization.





	Once Upon a Time in Uberwald

**Author's Note:**

  * For [hana_pouter](https://archiveofourown.org/users/hana_pouter/gifts).



> Written for hana_pouter, who paid me for this (as the "Commissions" series tag would imply) 2 years ago! Thank you for putting up with me, pchelka, I'm terribly fond of you.

The problem with maps, as far as Nutt was concerned, was that maps told you where an area was, but not how, exactly, to get to it. Roads on Uberwald maps tended to be highly inaccurate, on account of the fact they were washed out every few weeks when the inevitable mad inventor needed a thunderstorm. Steep terrain and strong rainfall made for difficult travel on the best of days. Most of the maps were topographical, or had things like “BEWARE” written on them in large letters.

“Would you say that we are qualified as lost, given that we don't exactly know where we are, but do know where we're going?”

Glenda looked over at him from where she'd been watching a bird build a nest out of what looked like old bones with morbid fascination. “Hmm?”

“Do you think we're lost,” he asked again, and she looked back at the bird. It had three eyes ( _triopticus corvidae_ ), and hissed, showing a forked tongue. Nutt ignored it. Living in Uberwald long enough did that to a person- there was just no getting around the drama that seemed to want to poke its head in every two seconds. At least the bird wasn't wearing an opera cape, as the ones at Lady Margolotta's palace were wont to do.

“I doubt it,” she said, nodding to the road they were on. It wasn't a particularly well traveled road, granted, but it was a pleasant one for Uberwald. There was the minimum amount of threatening scenery, and they'd only seen one wolf with glowing red eyes on their walk. “There's that sign post over there with that great “DO NOT ENTRE” sign on it, for one thing. In calligraphy and everything, what were they thinking? So we'll just go the other way, back to the inn. Why do you think we're not supposed to ENTRE?”

“Vampires, if I had to make a guess,” Nutt said, looking back at the map. It was still entirely unhelpful. He was quite good at deciphering cartography, but Uberwald was a mess of rocks, rills, dark forests, and sheer drop offs onto sharp, pointy rocks. That tended to be a bit more complicated. “They like calligraphy and illustrated manuscripts. Beautiful libraries, with all the appropriate dust and tasteful cobwebs.” He politely didn't mention Lady Margolotta's name, and she politely didn't give him a pointed look.

“Nutt?”

“Mm?” He eyed the paper in slight annoyance. Some of the landscape seemed to be rearranging, for the fifth time that day.

“There's a man in a top hat waving at us.”

He lowered the map and squinted. There was indeed a man in a top hat at the end of the road, waving his arms wildly. He was dressed a bit more shabbily than most Uberwald castle owners, and Nutt folded up the map to neatly tuck it away. 

“Should we go see what he wants?” Glenda asked, taking his hand, and Nutt smiled.

“Why not?”

They approached the man, who lowered his arms and gave them a bright, somewhat sharp smile. He was tall, thin, and decidedly pale.

“Velcome, friends-”

Glenda gave him a Look, and his words died in his throat.

“Looking to eat us, are you?” she asked, in the conversational tones that suggested, without much subtlety, that there was only one correct answer and you'd better get it right the first time.

The vampire, for that was certainly what he was, managed to become even more pale. “No, no, not at all! I vas merely hoping to help such veary travelers to find their vay again!”

“Mmm.” Glenda's look would have felled a lesser man, and as it was the vampire's knees buckled a little. “Which way to Lady Margolotta's?”

oOo

The atmosphere in Lady Margolotta's entryway could best be described as frosty.

For one thing, they'd arrived in the middle of a snow storm that seemed like it had walked directly out of every dramatic romance novel to ever exist, but in all fairness it was mostly the look on Lady Margolotta's face when she saw that Glenda had indeed come with Nutt.

“Welcome, Nutt,” she said, sparing him a smile and giving Glenda a short baring of her teeth. Glenda had expected this, and glowered directly back. 

Nutt stepped forward to greet her, and Glenda hung back, brushing the snow off of her coat. A butler near soundlessly appeared beside her and whisked it away to some unknown depth of the great palace, and Glenda shivered. The house was cold, unnervingly quiet, and smelled faintly of furniture polish. There had to be a ceiling, somewhere in the gloom above her, but she couldn't see it. A pair of uncomfortably regal paintings stared down at her. They had the sort of noses that suggested without much subtlety that they were smelling something terrible at all times. They also were wearing a great deal of rather ugly black lace.

“And Miss Sugarbean, we meet again,” Lady Margolotta said, her smile frozen on her face. Her teeth seemed rather sharper than a moment ago. She was wearing a cardigan with a bat brooch. The cardigan was delicate pink. She was _respectable_.

“Lady Margolotta,” Glenda said, giving her the exact same amount of smile. “Nice to see you looking so pale.”

Were Lady Margolotta a less controlled woman, a vein would have pulsed in her forehead. Nutt looked between the two with increasing concern, and Glenda stepped forward to take his hand, gently squeezing.

“Uberwald is very beautiful,” Glenda said, keeping her smile exactly in place. One of the joys of a job in service was smiling to higher class people was pounded into her head, and she knew perfectly well how much she could get away with. “All these lovely sharp cliffs with the spikes at the bottom, the garlic wreathes everywhere. Very homey, all of it. I feel so safe as I travel, what with the number of great clubs the coachmen carry. Nails in them and everything, just like being home.”

“We do try to be hospitable,” Lady Margolotta said with brittle cheer. Lady Margolotta, unused to the holding the same amount of smiling as a serving girl, was beginning to grimace. “Please, come in, we should get you situated. Separate bedrooms, of course.”  
Glenda's smile suddenly had a great deal of violence in it. “I will, of course, be staying beside Nutt.”

Nutt, who had been subjected Glenda's thoughts on Propriety and Young Men, wisely did not show his shock at that statement. Lady Margolotta's face had frozen.

“In the room next to his, more correctly,” Glenda added, and there was a silent breath of relief from the servants that were quietly hidden around different nooks and crannies of the room. Lady Margolotta forced a bit more pleasantry into her smile, and let them be swept by the same butler who had taken Glenda's coat, and they were lead through a warren of rooms. Nutt and the butler spoke in quiet undertones, the topic lost to her as she looked around the palace with a sharp eye. There wasn't a speck of dust to be seen, and she felt vaguely put out by that. 

“-the library, of course,” the butler was saying with a smile when she turned back to the conversation. “Ms. Healstether will be happy to see you again. And I must say, it's good to see you looking more...together.”

“Thank you, Mister VanRuthven,” Nutt said gratefully, and smiled at Glenda. “I have seen the world, at least a bigger piece of it than the castle, and the world saw me back again.”

Butler VanRuthven softened a little, and Nutt led Glenda to a pair of double doors with gold gilt and the kind of carvings that one didn't look too closely at on account of them being _classical_ and therefore liable to have small naked people in them. The doors were pushed open, and Glenda made a noise that could best be described as strangled. 

The bed had posts, the hangings were velvet, and in one corner was a fainting couch in brilliant crimson.

Glenda's mood had suddenly perked up.

oOo

Less diplomatic dinners had been held deciding the fate of empires. Lady Margolotta didn't eat, having no need to do so, but sat with them anyway and did her active best to keep her distance from Glenda. Since Glenda had all the excitement about eating with Lady Margolotta as a cat might have eating with a wolf[[1](%E2%80%9C#note1%E2%80%9D)], the dinner was decidedly tense. Nutt, thankfully, had noted this and was doing his best to keep the two sides from launching across the table and outright murdering each other.

Glenda was halfway through the second course (something with far too much overcooked meat, to avoid any leftover blood, and a lot of overcooked onions) when she realized what was happening.

She was meeting the in-laws.

Her fork didn't freeze on the way to her mouth, only by virtue of the fact that to drop food would be a sin unto at least 20 gods[[2](%E2%80%9C#note2%E2%80%9D)], and she screamed internally as she chewed. Ms. Healstether and Nutt were debating the finer points of Didactylos' last work, while Lady Margolotta chimed in here and there. These, she realized with no small amount of horror, were Nutt's parents. Nutt's parents, who had a great deal of influence on him, and who she should probably try to get along with if she was going to be mar- maintaining any sort of relationship with him.

Lady Margolotta looked over at her, and Glenda managed a slightly stressed, but not fake smile. She did so by thinking about Vetinari being robbed of her plowman's pie, and how upset he was about it. It never failed to lighten her mood. Lady Margolotta seemed a tad alarmed, but smiled back, and then went back to the discussion.

Dinner ended on a high note, with Glenda wholeheartedly complimenting the cook who brought out an actual spun sugar sculpture of the castle, and a matching cake to go with it. The cake was Black Forest Chocolate, according to Ms. Healstether, and so rich it was practically gold encrusted.

Glenda let herself fall back as Nutt and Ms. Healstether headed towards the library, and Lady Margolotta matched her pace.

“Quite a lovely castle you have,” Glenda said, and she meant it. Lady Margolotta's home was like every fairy tale dream come true, including that one with the evil pigs and the innocent wolf. Uberwald was a wonderful, if terrifying place. “Nutt said it was grand, like all the imaginings of a castle, but I didn't think there would be so many turrets and spires. It's beautiful.”

If Lady Margolotta was taken aback, she'd had plenty of training in not showing it. “It was a long project, over many centuries, but it was entirely worth it,” she said, a little smile on her lips. She had changed into a bright pink dress with little black bat earrings to match. “Glenda, may I speak frankly?”

Glenda, betrayed by social conditioning, said, “Yes, of course.”

“I am forever surprised by all that humans are, and even more surprised at what they accomplish. You continue to surprise me, and I look forward to seeing what you'll do alongside Nutt in the future.” Her smile grew a little. “You are a formidable woman.”

“Thank you, Lady Margolotta,” Glenda said, feeling a bit of pride well up. “It's quite something to hear that from you. Do you celebrate Hogswatch, in Uberwald?”

“I- well, yes.”

“Great. We'll switch off years, then. Ankh-Morpork one year, here the next. It's always good to be around family during the turn of the year, don't you think?” She smiled brightly, and relished the exact moment that Lady Margolotta realized she'd have to see her every other year.

Seeing the smile on Nutt's face would make it worth it.

**Author's Note:**

> 1 With the exception of Greebo, who would probably eat the wolf and then go back for seconds.  [ [return to text](%E2%80%9C#return1%E2%80%9D) ]
> 
> 2 It was a sin to all gods, with the exception of one very small mouse god, who believed that to be a blessing. A blessing unto mice, granted, but a blessing.  [ [return to text](%E2%80%9C#return2%E2%80%9D) ]


End file.
